Yoga: Changing The Brain's Stressful Habits

Three times a week at 7AM my Dad drives to a dance studio five blocks from the beach. In the bright, hardwood room, which sits above a Radioshack, a muscular man with a shaved head and board shorts whispers instructions in a mix of English and Sanskrit. My Dad, and the rest of the class - mostly lithe, tanned actresses wearing black Lululemmon tights - bend and twist into strange shapes. The windows fog over with the moisture of their collective breath.

My Dad has been going to yoga for over 6 years. I had always been interested in exercise and athletics, but I didn't get what was so great about this odd form of extended stretching. I also had a separate interest in neuroscience, but little did I know that this ancient practice would re-shape my understanding of the relationship between the body and the brain.

Yoga can supposedly improve depressive symptoms and immune function, as well as decrease chronic pain, reduce stress, and lower blood pressure. These claims have all been made by yogis over the years, and it sounds like a lot of new age foolishness. Surprisingly, however, everything in that list is supported by scientific research.

It may sound like magic that posing like a proud warrior or a crow could have such extensive effects, but it's not magic. It's neurobiology. This next statement may sound to you either profound or extremely obvious, but it comes down to this: the things you do and the thoughts you have change the firing patterns and chemical composition of your brain. Even actions as simple as changing your posture, relaxing the muscles on your face, or slowing your breathing rate, can affect the activity in your brain (beyond, of course, the required activity to make the action). These changes are often transient, but can be long-lasting, particularly if they entail changing a habit.

The first time I woke up early to join my Dad for yoga, I was picturing a roomful of people calmly twisting into pretzels to achieve enlightenment. As class was about to start my Dad mumbled from the next mat over, "You're supposed to breathe through your nose while constricting the back of your throat to make a sound like the ocean." That sounded a little hippy-dippy, touchy-feely to me, but I tried it anyway. I realized only later that this was one of the key factors in yoga's effect on the brain.

Within 15 minutes I was dripping so much sweat I could barely hold a downward-facing dog. Yet through all the poses the instructor kept talking about how we were supposed to keep our breathing calm, and steady. Remain calm? Are you kidding me? My muscles were shaking as I tried to hold myself in pushup position 4 inches above the floor. When the teacher asked us to twist so that the right shoulder dipped under the right knee, I could barely expand my lungs. He asked us to do a back bend, and my spine creaked, and painfully resisted my attempts. Remain calm? For goodness sake, he wanted us to stand on our heads!

As a neuroscientist, despite my initial incredulity, I came to realize that yoga works not because the poses are relaxing, but because they are stressful. It is your attempts to remain calm during this stress that create yoga's greatest neurobiological benefit.

Your brain tends to react to discomfort and disorientation in an automatic way, by triggering the physiological stress response and activating anxious neural chatter between the prefrontal cortex and the more emotional limbic system. The stress response itself increases the likelihood of anxious thoughts, like "Oh god, I'm going to pull something," or "I can't hold this pushup any longer". And in fact, your anxious thoughts themselves further exacerbate the stress response.

Interestingly, despite all the types of stressful situations a person can be in (standing on your head, running away from a lion, finishing those TPS reports by 5 o'clock) the nervous system has just one stress response. The specific thoughts you have may differ, but the brain regions involved, and the physiological response will be the same. The physiological stress response means an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension and elevation of cortisol and other stress hormones.

The fascinating thing about the mind-body interaction is that it works both ways. For example, if you're stressed, your muscles will tense (preparing to run away from a lion), and this will lead to more negative thinking. Relaxing those muscles, particularly the facial muscles, will push the brain in the other direction, away from stress, and toward more relaxed thoughts. Similarly, under stress, your breathing rate increases. Slowing down your breathing pushes the brain away from the stress response, and again toward more relaxed thinking.

So how does this all fit together? As I stated before, the stress response in the nervous system is triggered reflexively by discomfort and disorientation. The twisting of your spine, the lactic acid building up in your straining muscles, the uneasy feeling of being upside down, the inability to breathe, are all different forms of discomfort and disorientation, and tend to lead reflexively to anxious thinking and activation of the stress response in the entire nervous system. However, just because this response is automatic, does not mean it is necessary. It is, in fact, just a habit of the brain. One of the main purposes of yoga is to retrain this habit so that your brain stops automatically invoking the stress response

Some people might think that the stress response is an innate reflex and thus can't be changed. To clarify, the response is partly innate and partly learned in early childhood. Yes, the stress response comes already downloaded and installed on your early operating system. However, this tendency is enhanced, by years of reinforcement. In particular, you absorb how those around you, particularly your parents, react to stressful situations. Their reactions get wired into your nervous system. However, just because a habit is innate, and then reinforced, does not mean it is immune to change. Almost any habit can be changed, or at least improved, through repeated action of a new habit.

To give an example of changing a similarly innate reaction, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have a gag reflex. This gag reflex gets in the way of many college freshmen as they struggle through the college socialization process of chugging a beer. Most have a difficult time. However, by the time senior year spring break rolls around, many of them have learned how to largely suppress that reflex. Like your gag reflex, just because your stress response is innate and automatic doesn't mean it can't be reshaped through sustained, and intentioned practice.

For some people waking up at 6:30AM to go to a yoga class would automatically trigger their stress response. The good news is that you don't actually have to go to a class to practice yoga. The poses most people associate with yoga are just a particular way of practicing yoga called the asana practice ("asana" translates to "pose"). The asana practice challenges you in a specific way, but life itself offers plenty of challenges on its own. Under any stressful circumstance you can attempt the same calming techniques: breathing deeply and slowly, relaxing your facial muscles, clearing your head of anxious thoughts, focusing on the present. In fact, applying these techniques to real life is what yoga is all about. Yoga is simply the process of paying attention to the present moment and calming the mind. Over time you will start to retrain your automatic stress reaction, and replace it with one more conducive to happiness and overall well-being.

After going back to my Dad's yoga class a few times, I eventually came to the realization that not only can you practice yoga in real life, but, conversely, you could go to a yoga class and not really be doing yoga. Some of the people around him, particularly in image conscious LA, might just simply be placing their legs behind their heads, and still not be focusing on keeping their breath calm and steady, or their minds clear. They might be focused on something else entirely. Without the sustained intention of focusing on the present, and calming the mind, going to a yoga class is literally just going through the motions. Come to think of it, who knows if my Dad is really doing yoga, and not just staring at the women with their legs behind their heads? Well, all I can say is that from my mat I can hear his breaths rolling deep and slow like the ocean, and he has no problem standing on his head.

Thank you for this article. I've been practicing power yoga on and off for the past four years. This is the first clear explanation I've come across as to why yoga practice feels so calming and centering even though the sessions themselves can be very stressful and difficult.

From now on I will make sure to keep my face relaxed and breath like Darth Vader!

Great article. I appreciate your recognition of that key element that often gets overlooked: bringing the practice to your daily life – retraining the mind in a safe environment – and the body, too, building the strength to hold good posture throughout the day to keep your brain happy. And this mental and physical poise in an individual seems to seep out and help even those around him/her. This encourages me to return to my slow yoga – meditation practice.

I have been having problem sleeping for many many years. I have tried almost everything but nothing really helped. I started practicing yoga a bout a year ago, it didn't really help either. I wonder if anyone out there has any experience in yoga and sleep relationships. I have a lot of yoga books but I don't find any information regarding this.

I'm surprised that yoga didn't help at all. But there are many more direct, effective ways to improve sleep. I don't know what you've tried out, but often times difficulty sleeping can be exacerbated by poor sleep hygiene (which I should probably write a post about). In addition you may have a medical condition (such as sleep apnea) that is making sleep difficult. I suggest going to see a sleep specialist.

Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation practice performed while resting on your back that solves insomnia for many people. No poses required! It's much more than a sleep aid, though. I'm offering an online distance course in this practice. Stop by my website for more information on the course or contact someone locally. Good luck

Hi Matt,
Have you tried headstnd (and its counter poses of course) before going to bed? Whenever i have sleep problem, i'll do at least 5 mins of headstand, keeping my eyes close and breath slowly...normally when I'm done with me, i feel so relaxed and fall asleep within a few minutes..

I always knew yoga was supposed to help in some way. Kept reading article after article about its great results, but I have always had so much trouble establishing a yoga routine even after hearing all about its ultimate benefits. Finally, I really do get it. Thank you!!!

I've been practicing Yoga for many years and in my tenth year of teaching. I've evolved to
teach exactly what you are saying here, calming the mind while under the duress of practice.
grace into effort.

developing an equal steady breath no matter which posture we're doing... it works, the ongoing feedback from students over the years correlates with the science very well.

Thanks for the feedback. I can assure you that any sexist suggestions are tongue-in-cheek. I'm attempting to bring a bit of levity to science, the general stuffiness of which can sometimes inhibit dissemination of information to the wider public.

I think this article is well-written and provides an easy-to-understand explanation of how yoga affects the brain. But, straight up calling a human being a "trophy wife" is sexist. And I can assure you, I have a great sense of humor! I would have loved to share this article with my high school students (I teach a yoga seminar), but I have no intention of reinforcing tired gender stereotypes. I'm only replying because you seem open to the feedback.

Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for pushing me over the edge of atonement. I have now added an asterisk next to "trophy wives" and explain at the bottom of the article: "*For those of you who care about such things, this comment is intended to reflect the author's prejudices about yoga before trying it." I too have no intention of reinforcing tired gender stereotypes. But I do intend to make fun of them.

Your so called jokes definitely just come across as you judging women. People are who they are, whether they are young, old, tanned, pale, thin, or fat, it does not mean you should judge them for their choices, they are complex human beings and deserve better than your "tongue and cheek" pokes at them. Adding levity to your scientific article is of course a nice idea, but how about leaving your sexist attitude out of that levity. You can be funny while being respectful and those jokes come off as very disrespectful.

Oh please! Referring to the women in a yoga class as trophy wives has nothing to do with your prejudice about yoga before trying it. It reflects your preconceived ideas about fit, attractive women you haven't met and don't know.

Thanks for the article. I'm probably your Dad's age and am somewhat amazed at all the benefits that come from practicing yoga. When I started I got into pushing the physical part until I hurt myself and had to quit. Now I'm back with Connected Warriors and am finding a spiritual connection and physical fitness coming in a way that may challenge me, but not as much as the more advanced classes.

wisely done article, congrates for being blessed by intelligent
observation.I am practising ayurveda for about 20 yrs.and it was
impressive to know your point of view,it will be more enlightening if you feel its importance in balancing basic humours
i.e. vatta,pitta and kuffa as ancient masters were smart enough
to hit the BALANCE among nervous,endocrinal and lymphatic systems

Any study on direct effects of yoga on dopamine levels and serotonin will be highly appreciated if available statisticaly.

Brilliant, articulate, and right on. As a long-time yoga teacher and studio owner, I know well the challenges of describing "how" yoga works--and thus how it has the power to radically transform lives. Sadly, very few yoga teachers are equipped to articulate the "how" of the science of yoga as they are trained only in the "what" (to do).

At Yoga Pura we've had great success using yoga to help students healing from a wide variety of psychological issues including post-traumatic stress. We've packaged that wisdom, and the associated practices, into a ten-week, home-based program called BOOTSTRAP customized for our troops and veterans.

Free to troops and veterans, BOOTSTRAP will be available this fall to put this potent science to work in the lives of hundreds of thousands.

I am so disappointed that you projected onto yoga your thoughts that yoga is hard and puts the body into stress mode. Also that getting up early to go to yoga is stressful.

Yourojected your ideas and experience and used ´science´discussions t ojustify such.
It is a deep peasure for me to getup early to go t oyoga. I do no always feel stress in doing many poses.. I admit I do in soem ormany depending on the particular method, class or series. I love my yoga and th esimple calming ritual of coming home to myself in going through a series is calming, heathy, centering and greatly beneficial to my life attitude and frame of mind.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I think you may have misunderstood the point, or perhaps we're just talking about different types of yoga. Yes yin yoga or restorative yoga are completely different experiences than the type of power yoga I'm describing here, and they offer great benefits. I could write a whole other post on the benefits of more peaceful yoga, but that was not the point of this one. Keep enjoying your calming practice. Although if that is all you do I would suggest trying a more energetic type of yoga once in a while.

I practice hard body hot yoga vinyasa flow from instructors about 26-30 yrs old. I am 65. I have practiced over 40 years. Again I called you on projecting your experience of being in sressful situation as a new person in a class as how all people ´s brains code and use the effects of yoga. I am not a neuroscientist. I am a learning Specialist. I am a mature adult and I know projection for what it is- inaccurate and possibly misinforming to others.

A commenter below made an excellent clarifying point. I'm not talking about psychological stress. I'm talking about the physiological definition of stress, which is anything that pushes you out of homeostasis. Psychological stress is only part of that.

I am not a yoga expert, though I am a neuroscience expert. My asana practice is somewhat irregular, though I started about 8 years ago, but I do try to implement yoga in my life as much as I can. This article was not simply what I learned from my first yoga class, but what I've come to understand in the years since.

In addition I am not claiming that this article comprehensively explains every positive aspect of every type of yoga. You hit on an excellent point that one positive aspect of yoga is the repetition of it. Repetition of habits/rituals reduces anxiety, and are very beneficial. Sometimes settling into a routine can be a very positive experience. However, that is not all yoga is about, though I suppose it depends on the type of yoga. Some types of yoga (the kind I talk about it my article) ask of you to gently push the boundaries of what you think is comfortable.

For example, standing on one leg is difficult, and that difficulty is a stress on your body. It can be both physically demanding, and make you worry about falling over, both of which are stressors. As you advance in your yoga practice there are more advanced standing-on-one-leg poses. Because if all you ever did was the simple pose and it got easier and easier for you, then you're missing out on an opportunity for growth. Yes, if you just want to do the same thing over and over so that it gets so easy that it's no longer challenging, that's fine. That's just a different type of yoga. Maybe nothing is challenging for you anymore, but considering how upset you got at my article, I'm guessing there are still challenges for you to face.

A yoga teacher once said to me, "No one ever reached enlightenment by being able to touch their toes." It is not the pose, but your experience of the pose that's important. For some people touching their toes might be all they can bear, and others need something more challenging in order to reach a point where they are pushing themselves.

If at this point you still disagree with me entirely, then we're probably at an impasse. Perhaps another more experienced yogi can chime in. I'm guessing we're simply talking abut different aspects of yoga, or different styles.

Alex, I think it is hard for some people to go beyond the article and understand that you're talking about neurological changes in your brain rather than yoga itself.

I don't have a Ph.D and i am not a neurologist, I am just someone who spent years fixing my own brain. I don't even do Yoga my girlfriend does and she loves it. One thing I came to understanding re-training my own brain is that the more you resist your anxious feelings the worse they get and the more you sit with your anxiety, the better your brain gets at processing these feelings. The bottom line is like any exercise, this takes time and practice and doing it over and over and your mind learns new habits.

I do something similar to yoga, I sit by an ocean and i allow all the stressful thoughts flood into my brain, while they're there I don't do anything with them, i just let them swim around. I have tamed my own desire to "follow" and "react" to these stressful thoughts and in the process became calmer and less reactive and emotional. The only way to explain this, is that I've practiced long enough for my mind to sustain neurological changes and I've created an automatic response in my brain, that when I get overwhelmed I stay calm.

Yoga does something similar, it allows you to practice making the choice of staying with an uncomfortable feeling, this choice done over and over like practice allows for neurological changes to happen in your mind.

I thought your post was excellent, it has confirmed everything I have thought I understood. For those who are concentrating strictly on you doing yoga are missing the point of this article entirely.

Your brain is a muscle and it has habits. Thinking habits, stress habits.

This is exactly how meditation works, you don't progress when you sit still, meditation is not about "sitting still" its about refusing to move and sitting still, the "refusing" part is what teaches your brain to deal with the influx of thoughts wanting you to get up and leave because you're so restless..in the end your brain and body learn to sit still even when there are stressful thoughts all around you and that is the point of both yoga and meditation.

i'm a living example of someone who was able to re-train my brain to respond calmly to various stressors...i really does work, with enough practice and repetition...

It seems to be all based on his assumptions, gained from his singular experience, and not much else.

I don't have any science to contribute to this, but as Alex is clearly comfortable with that, I'll add a few assumptions of my own. In my own experience, the practice of yoga leaves one calmer simply because standing on one leg requires you to concentrate. While you're concentrating your mind is necessarily not continuously flitting off in all directions. Do this for an hour and a half and your mind has had a really good meditative workout whilst your body has had a nice physical workout. Naturally this feels good. Calming. Relaxing. Etc.

I think Alex actually experienced that same thing. Because his body was not strong enough / fit enough / adapted enough to pull off these postures (sounds like he did some kind of sun salutations based class) he had to concentrate doubly hard. I don't think stress caused his calm at all.

People that practice yoga do not get stressed doing these postures. That's missing the point. Patanjali taught "Sthira sukham asanam" which basically means "comfortable and steady posture". No huffing and puffing or stressing out!

Alex is not experiencing "stress" doing these exercises. Your body does (whether you want to recognize it or not), exercising is the act of creating small tears in your muscle so that it can grow, thats what stretching does, your elevated heart rate brings more blood and oxygen supply to your muscles..i.e. your body is under-stress.

the practice of yoga is an actual "practice" to keep calm while your body is under stress, keep your breathing calm and steady (if you're not doing this, you're not doing yoga properly), keep yourself in a pose even though it makes you feel uncomfortable. The *act* of stretching is not as important as the *act* of keeping your breathing nice and calm and keeping your pose for the right amount of time. This teaches your brain that even though your body is experiencing stress and your mind probably wants you to let go of the pose, you are NOT going to do that, you're going to keep calm and breathe and keep your pose.

This habit transforms your everyday life, it teaches your brain to keep calm in actual stressful situations, it teaches you to be patient, to breathe in stressful situations.

This post doesn't have much to do with "oh i did yoga today and it hurt" and everything to do with how Yoga affects your habits without realizing it and changes your brain chemistry.

So..NO, there actually isn't anything wrong with this article, it's scientifically proven that Yoga improves your mind and Alex is explaining why it does so. This is a FACT, a proven, researched scientific FACT, not something he just came up with.

Thank you so much for this clear, simple, and well written piece about the affects of yoga on our brain and nervous system. As a yoga teacher and life coach it's always nice to have my beliefs and knowledge backed up by Ph.D.s and scientists. I don't have access to some of the research and testing you do, so thanks for doing that and sharing your wisdom.

Would you mind if I reference this in an upcoming post of re-wiring our mind and body for success?

With Gratitude,
Rebecca Niziol

PS. It's exciting to hear you got yourself on a mat to feel the benefits! I hope it's a practice that lures you into continuing.

Over the years I have sporadically added various forms of yoga, from Iyengar to Bikram, in my CrossFit-like training regime and it has really helped me.

As I get closer to 40 it's the mobility that I really need to work on to maintain decent performance in sports and general agility in life. Secondly with a stressful corporate job yoga gives me some very focused "me-time" leaving me much more relaxed yet energized and focused during the periods of yoga.

I will transition to making yoga the core of my workouts and the rest complimentary but it's so much fun making iron defy the forces of gravity that I still prioritize that.

As a 4 year ashtanga practitioner, I thought this quote was the best part of this article:

...yoga works not because the poses are relaxing, but because they are stressful. It is your attempts to remain calm during this stress that create yoga's greatest neurobiological benefit.

This is something I experience nearly every time I practice, but had not fully articulated in my own mind, especially in poses that are really challenging or that I can't always manage to do with any predictability, like binding in marichyasana d.

However, if I never read another yoga article again where the (male) author seems to feel required to string together "ashtanga" and "trophy wife" in the same paragraph, that will be ok with me!

There was nothing "tongue in cheek" about the sexist tone in this article. If it was tongue in cheek, it would be funny. This just sounds... resentful. I could not believe it when I saw the date was 2011, let alone the fact that the author as a PhD! Seriously? This sounds like it was written 30 years ago. By someone's trophy husband.

As a 4 year ashtanga practitioner, I thought this quote was the best part of this article:

...yoga works not because the poses are relaxing, but because they are stressful. It is your attempts to remain calm during this stress that create yoga's greatest neurobiological benefit.

This is something I experience nearly every time I practice, but had not fully articulated in my own mind, especially in poses that are really challenging or that I can't always manage to do with any predictability, like binding in marichyasana d.

However, if I never read another yoga article again where the (male) author seems to feel required to string together "ashtanga" and "trophy wife" in the same paragraph, that will be ok with me!

There was nothing "tongue in cheek" about the sexist tone in this article. If it was tongue in cheek, it would be funny. This just sounds... resentful. I could not believe it when I saw the date was 2011, let alone the fact that the author as a PhD! Seriously? This sounds like it was written 30 years ago. By someone's trophy husband.

It is also important to stay relaxed and calm while reading an article, even while some parts of it may seem to make you stressful, especially any tongue in cheek comments. I encourage you to check out some of Dr. Korb's other articles as you can see he isn't necessarily just an out-dated trophy husband. This article will probably give you a different picture...

Lovely article and really good points made. I was disappointed to hear the harsh words you had for the 'trophy wives' and those who didn't 'get' what they were doing. I thought it sounded judgemental and revealed your fears and anxieties, perhaps more than theirs. One of the things I have enjoyed about my yoga practise is sharing space and energy with lots of people whom I would never normally have anything in common with and learning to trust and respect those people more. I hope you continue to open up to your fellow yogis, even the attractive tanned ones, and give them the respect they deserve when writing about the time you have together.

As a clinical psychologist practicing mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy with my patients, your scientific points reinforce what I know and what I teach. As a practicing yogi, I can also appreciate the experiential points that you make. And it fits with recent research in health psychology that it is our interpretation of the stress response as "stressful" (versus as "preparing my body to do something") that leads to long term physiological damage--not the heightened sympathetic nervous system reaction.

However, do you really mean to alienate at least 50% of your reading audience? Frankly, my guess is that the majority of people attracted to an article like this one are female. Referring to women as "mostly lithe, tanned actresses and trophy wives* wearing black Lululemmon tights"--whether or not you later qualify yourself in response to angry readers--is deplorable. Your lack of knowledge of women, and women who practice yoga, does not give you the right to unilaterally castigate them as airheads showing up to be seen or to look good. Trophy wives? Are you for real? And thank you (?) for sparing us your lame blond jokes? You would do better to connect with at least 50% of your readership by looking less like a neanderthal (sorry, was that sexist? oh, I included that just for the humor factor) and more like a scientist in the 21st century.

As a clinical psychologist practicing mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy with my patients, your scientific points reinforce what I know and what I teach. As a practicing yogi, I can also appreciate the experiential points that you make. And it fits with recent research in health psychology that it is our interpretation of the stress response as "stressful" (versus as "preparing my body to do something") that leads to long term physiological damage--not the heightened sympathetic nervous system reaction.

However, do you really mean to alienate at least 50% of your reading audience? Frankly, my guess is that the majority of people attracted to an article like this one are female. Referring to women as "mostly lithe, tanned actresses and trophy wives* wearing black Lululemmon tights"--whether or not you later qualify yourself in response to angry readers--is deplorable. Your lack of knowledge of women, and women who practice yoga, does not give you the right to unilaterally castigate them as airheads showing up to be seen or to look good. Trophy wives? Are you for real? And thank you (?) for sparing us your lame blond jokes? You would do better to connect with at least 50% of your readership by looking less like a neanderthal (sorry, was that sexist? oh, I included that just for the humor factor) and more like a scientist in the 21st century.

I'd really like to appreciate this article as based in science and from a professional, but within the first paragraph, the writer's tone is so dismissive and derogatory that I can't pay attention to the points he's making regarding yoga.
Even skimming through the remainder of the article, there are repugnant statements and clearly biased thinking that detract from the entire point of the article, to show the true benefits of yoga.

I appreciate the passion of my readers, and in response to continued criticism that some people found some of my remarks offensive, I have removed those remarks from the article. While I never intended to offend anyone and these jokes were an attempt to make science light-hearted and fun, I recognize that for some people these "jokes" were distracting from the main point of the article (and they weren't very funny jokes anyway).

Great article either way! Love the line about staying calm in the face of a stressful pose. In any case, maybe those upset should try gently closing their eyes, filling their lungs with a deep breath of air and focus on the third eye... Shouldn't let a blonde joke get them too worked up :).

Hi there! Great article you have, I would also want to share my thoughts that Meditation indeed has positive effects not only in the body but also in the mind, a total holistic wellness that brings us to know our inner-self better. It gives us a peace of mind that helps us have a much better perception about our lives.
Our advocacy is to promote the positive effects of meditation, yoga and inner wellness.
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Thank you and have a great day!